LINGUIST List 16.417

Thu Feb 10 2005

Calls: General Ling/USA; Discourse Analysis/Germany

Editor for this issue: Amy Wronkowicz <amylinguistlist.org>

As a matter of policy, LINGUIST discourages the use of abbreviations or acronyms in conference announcements unless they are explained in the text. To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html.

The American Name Society (ANS), a professional organization devoted to the study of names and their role in society, will meet with the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), American Dialect Society (ADS), and other allied, professional organizations for its annual meeting and conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the Hyatt Regency Albuquerque, January 5-8, 2006.

Papers on any aspect of onomastics are appropriate, and a preces of not more than 500 words, accompanied by a 100-word abstract to be published in the conference program, should be submitted as soon as convenient but not later than August 15, 2005. In the precis, the subject of the proposed paper should be stated in a simple, topic sentence, which is then effectively supported by substantiating information and specific examples.

Proposals for panel discussions, suggestions for distinguished speakers, and/or other types of proposals are due by August 1, 2005. Although the prefered mode of transmission for both the precis and accompanying abstract as well proposals is by an introductory e-mail with attachment sent to paordverizon.net, they may also be sent by surface mail addressed to: P. A. Ord, 414 High Earls Road, Westminster, MD 21158-3710.

All precis will be evaluated anonymously, and their authors will be notified by September 1, 2005, or as soon as possible thereafter. Biographical information for each participant will be requested at the time a paper is accepted for presentation.

For a long time, the development of precise frameworks of discourse interpretation has been hampered by the lack of a deeper understanding of the dependencies between different discourse units. The recent 15 years have seen a considerable advance in this field. A number of strong constraints have been proposed that restrict the sequencing and attaching of segments at various descriptive levels, as well as the interpretation of their interrelations. Early, and very influential, work on the sequencing and ordering of discourse segments has been done by Grosz & Sidner (1986).

One of the best-known of the constraints on sequencing and accessibility of expressions across sentence boundaries is the RFC (Right Frontier Constraint), often associated with a paper of Polanyi (1988). Other relevant constraints are, e.g. the CSC (Coordinate Structure Constraint, Ross 1967) or the recently expressed MDC (Maximal Discourse Coherence, Asher & Lascarides 2003) principle.

The goal of this workshop is to provide a forum for presenting recent research on constraints in discourse. The target areas include the recognition of discourse structure as well as the interpretation and generation of discourse in a broad variety of domains. The workshop offers a forum for researchers from diverse formal approaches, including but not limited to:

We invite talks that further our theoretical understanding of the role of constraints in discourse, as well as empirical studies that shed light on their empirical validity. The conference is explicitly intended for discussion and comparison of theoretical accounts that lay the ground for applications. It is not intended as a platform for system demonstrations. Specific topics might relate to

Paper Submission ================ Researchers interested in contributing a paper to the workshop are invited to submit an abstract that spans not more than 3 pages in PDF or PS (single column, 10pt font size, a4 paper, including a bibliography) using the form at the workshop website (http://www.constraints-in-discourse.de). Reviews will be done blindly; the abstracts may accordingly not include explicit hints that allow the identification of the authors (such as ''in paper (...) we show that'').

Coordinates =========== The workshop will take place from 3-5 June, 2005. It will be hosted by the University of Dortmund, Germany. Dortmund is situated in the Eastern region of the Ruhrgebiet and can easily be reached via car, airplane or train. The venue will be Haus Bommerholz, the conference center of Univ. Dortmund.

Fees ==== We thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG = German NSF) for the funding.

Their support allows us to keep the fees generally low. The fees (including coffee breaks and lunch) are